Tuesday, September 20, 2011

9-20-2011Originally, this was gonna be called "Scribbling fer fun an profits," done entirely in the style of Ratshag, just for the hell of it.

7-14-2011Inscriptionist....scripter.....inscriber.....scriber...scrivener....shriner....bugger it, I calls meself a scribbler. The scribblin' perfession be a diffrent beast altogethers, far from the more genteel craftifications of blacksmithies, tailorerers, an them buggers what smush leather together and calls it armor.

And then I discovered he had done it already, in his own inimitable style. So, scratch that, I'll just do in my own way.

That's 6 full 32 slot inscription bags, with an additional 12 slots on the 7th. 6x32=192+12=204 different Northrend inscription research/Books of Glyph Mastery, Techniques, and minor inscription research glyphs.

Now, you've done all your research, learned the techniques, and read the books.....but what you haven't done is actually make gold with your profession. You've tried, but never seem to make a lot of sales. It's confusing, because you always give the customers a great discount, compared to those other scribes who only undercut each other by 1 freakin' copper, just to get their glyphs at the top of the list.

Sit back, while I illuminate the situation.Ur doeing it wrong!The thing about glyphs and enchanting scrolls is that they have NO sales price to vendors. Therefore, their posting cost to the Auction House is only 1 silver. 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours.....only 1 silver. This allows you to post, then cancel and re-post any time you get undercut by a competitor, at a very minimal cost to you. Compare that to Blacksmithing, where the vendor price of the armor and weapons you make are so high that the deposit cost at the AH, even for 12 hours, is still over 1-2 gold apiece. Contrast that to 4 gold TOTAL for posting 400 glyphs, and you'll start to realize that the margins are higher, and the overhead costs are a lot more lenient than the other crafting professions (not including enchanting).

Like the Industrial Revolutions effects on industry, so too is the effects of addons and macros on crafting and making gold in WoW. Even having a macro that does "/Cast milling /use Stormvine /use Whiptail..../use etc" can save you a lot of time, just by not having to click on each stack that you want to mill, as long as they're in stacks of at least 5. If the macro follows its script, and encounters a stack of less than 5 herbs, it won't allow you to mill, even though there are full stacks of a herb further down the macro list.

But, I digress. The macros will only save you time, the addon(s) will make you money. The two main ones I use are TSM and Auctionator. Edit - I also remember I use Millhelp and Millhelp_Glyphs, which I guess is included in Millhelp. If you look at the first image, you can see it displaying the inks/pigments needed to make the glyph, which is very useful.

TSM (TradeSkillMaster) is probably under-utilized by me, as I only use it for posting and cancelling auctions, not the crafting queues that Mysscia has told me about. But.....for posting and cancelling, it's unrivaled. Set up your groups of items, with posting time, undercut amount, minimum price you'll sell at, and maximum posting amount (for when nobody else is in that market, heh!).

Auctionator is the addon I use for storing my search lists. It searches for what you have specified, then displays them in descending order of price per 1 unit, whether it's a single or full stack. The great part of this is the ability to quickly buy out auctions, without the annoying confirmation that you'd have with the standard Blizzard UI. The drawback is that it doesn't show the bid amount, only the buyout. Also, it doesn't show the time left, which could save you gold if you saw the item only had a short time left. Cancelling and re-posting with Auctionator....I wouldn't. The anonymity of Auctionator doesn't let you know who you're going against in that particular market, which can be verrrry important.

Dealing with CompetitionThere are a few types of competitors.1) Power-levelers.These people are leveling inscription to get to the max level, primarily with trainer taught recipes. If you decide to sell trainer taught glyphs, these are the guys that will mess you up. If you post glyphs in an open market at 250 gold each, these guys will come along and post at 10 gold each, even though the mats cost more than that.2)"Happy, freinly peoples" - as Gevlon would say. These people want to supply glyphs at a cost only slightly high than the material cost. They'll sell research/book taught glyphs at a much lower price than you would prefer, and mess up glyphs markets for a long time, as the next guy will post lower than them.3) The One-percenter.When I first started posting (manually, took me forever to post a hundred glyphs), I hated the people that would undercut me by 1 copper. "It's not fair, they'd post higher if they could." - is how I felt.But in actuality, these are the scribes you want to be in competition with. With a 1 copper undercut, it would take 1000 undercuts to drop the market price by 1 gold. With the first 2 types, their drastic undercuts affect the market for a long time, until either a scribe buys all the glyphs to reset the market, or people stop posting, leaving the market empty for the next scribe to post at their preferred price point.

One last thing about 1-percenters. They are the ONLY safe bet to buy out when you want to reset the market. Since they're almost chained to using their set discount with using an addon, they will rarely if never undercut by the huge amounts the other classes of scribes do. And that's why I like TSM, since it shows me the other people in the market. If I have to buy out 3 glyphs at 50 gold each from a percenter, to reset the market up to 300 gold, so be it. But I'll be damned at buying 6 glyphs at 35 gold each from powerleveler who did 1 northrend research on his way up to max level, he'll just post again at the same ridiculous price point. Buyout percenters when it's feasible, undercut the noobs, and you'll gain power over a ton of markets.

Shoot, this is turning into a wall of text, but....Stalking the CompetitionAdd everyone you see posting in your glyph markets to your friends list. If they do huge undercuts, add a note to that person like "idiot glypher." One-percenters would be "glypher." If you notice them come on when you're posting, do another posting scan to see if you need to undercut them when they're done. Scribes that are serious competition could also be added to your alts friends list, just so you'd know if you might want to jump back and re-post. This is another reason to favor TSM over Auctionator, since the auctions shown in Auctionator are anonymous.

Supplies and DemandI'm trying to keep around 6-10 of each of the 204 glyphs, so I don't run out, and cause a hole in my bags. This allows me to quickly post when I get on, then run a cancel scan to clean up the remnants of my last post. It's a lot better to get your stuff to the front of the market, rather than cancelling when you first get on, waiting for the 8-10 minutes for your 400+ glyphs (I usually only post 2 of each glyph) to dribble in at 50 items per one minute mail scan, then posting for the first time that day.